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Mayor Rob Ford will enter the second week of a crack cocaine scandal without the counsel of his top aide, whom he fired without explanation on Thursday before leaving city hall in silence out a back door.

Mark Towhey, Ford’s chief of staff since August and his top policy adviser since the 2010 election campaign, would not explain why Ford dismissed him. And he would not say what Ford told him about the scandal, nor what he told Ford.

“My advice is for him and him only,” Towhey told reporters as he walked to his car in the parking garage.

Towhey’s ouster deepened the crisis surrounding the embattled mayor. To the dismay of almost every member of council, including the deputy mayor, Ford remained mum on Thursday about media reports on a video in which he appears to smoke crack and utter an anti-gay slur.

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Ford elevated deputy chief of staff Earl Provost to the position of acting chief of staff. But Provost, a Liberal, may not want to hold the post for long.

“Earl is very loyal to Mark as well as to the mayor. He only took the job to facilitate a professional and dignified resolution to this situation,” said a source close to the administration, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal politics.

Ford has now gone seven days without offering a detailed response to the reports last Thursday evening by the Star and the U.S. website Gawker. He did call the reports “ridiculous” and “absolutely not true” in terse statements last Friday.

Councillor John Parker, a conservative who serves as council’s deputy speaker, suggested in a Thursday email to constituents that voters are entitled to believe the worst.

“At a certain point, I believe it is fair for the most unfavourable conclusions to be drawn. I find it hard to argue that that point has not already been reached,” Parker said, adding he found Ford’s continued silence “shocking.”

Towhey, a former army infantry captain and private-sector crisis consultant, was widely disliked by a city council that found him abrupt and unwilling to compromise. He presided over an ineffectual 10 months in which Ford lost votes at council and was sidetracked by multiple odd controversies.

Yet his departure leaves a gaping hole in Ford’s administration as the mayor attempts to weather a scandal that threatens his career. With Ford often more interested in returning constituents’ phone calls than fulfilling the traditional duties of the city’s chief executive, many councillors and civil servants saw Towhey as the man actually in charge of the municipal government.

Towhey was a dominant presence in an oft-beleaguered office many councillors believed Ford had understaffed to keep spending down. He served simultaneously as Ford’s key strategist, crisis manager, policy brain and liaison with top civil servants.

When chunks of concrete fell from the Gardiner Expressway in 2012, for example, Towhey convened a meeting with senior officials, then listed a series of aggressive demands for inspections, traffic management and communication with residents.

Councillors expressed bafflement at Ford’s decision to sack Towhey at a time when he is struggling to retain the support of even those loyal to him.

“This is definitely not the time to let a chief of staff go, especially when the mayor is dealing with this personal issue,” said Councillor Ana Bailao, a centrist.

“City business needs to go on. It’s bad enough the mayor is not addressing the situation, he’s not speaking to Torontonians, and now on top of having to deal with his personal situation, now he has an office without a chief of staff.”

“You’ve got one of the most volatile mayors in the history of the city. I have no idea what he’s thinking, what he’s doing, why he’s doing it,” said Councillor Adam Vaughan, a Ford opponent. “Mark Towhey was very aggressive but not very skilled at getting legislation through. He wasn’t very skilled at managing council, but he was extraordinarily aggressive at trying.”

Aware of his reputation with councillors, Towhey had taken to self-deprecatingly
joking on Twitter
about the perception that he was “#evil.”

Asked in person how he was doing, he would say “peachy” with a thin smile during even Ford’s bad days. Soon after he was filmed driving away from the parking garage, he joked on Twitter that he was happy he had washed his car the previous day.

“He was always good-natured, accessible and funny,” said Dave Meslin, a prominent local activist with whom Towhey has met for lunch. At the same time, Meslin said, “council has been really polarized. There’s been a lot of negative energy. And some of that has to be the responsibility of the chief of staff.”

Nick Kouvalis, Ford’s campaign chief and his first chief of staff, said: “Mark Towhey is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. And he’s got a family. And it’s time for him to go take a well-deserved vacation and be proud of the things he has accomplished during his tenure with the Fords.”

Ford, who has deliberately maintained a leaner office operation than his predecessors, has few trusted senior advisers left. His
staff as of Thursday
included only 15 people, counting Towhey and recently hired former football coach David Price, who scrambled to the parking garage shortly after Towhey’s departure.

Towhey, in his late 40s, served as Ford’s senior policy adviser during the 2010 mayoral campaign, then during the beginning of the mayoral term.

“Mr. Towhey has been a intricate part of the Mayor's Office and has made many valuable contributions,” Ford’s office said in a statement. “The Mayor thanks Mr. Towhey for his valuable service and wishes him the very best in his future endeavours.”

Towhey did not immediately accept Ford’s offer to elevate him to chief of staff. Instead, sources
told the Star last year
, he responded with a list of demands that included concerns about the mayor’s professional and personal conduct. Ford then named Provost acting chief of staff while he conducted a search.

Councillor Doug Ford, the mayor’s influential brother and the source of regular tension with the mayor’s paid advisers, refused to discuss the firing. He did call Towhey “a good guy.”

Towhey, like Ford a small-government conservative, sparked a mini-controversy of his own during the mayoral campaign. In a pre-campaign post on his personal blog, he suggested that the city stop funding the TTC, allow private companies to buy chunks of its operations, and allow underused bus routes to be “abandoned.”

As for riders on those routes, Towhey wrote with characteristic bluntness: “Well, life’s tough. Instead of being the only three people on a 60-passenger bus, perhaps these people will have to introduce themselves, get to know their neighbours and share a taxi.”

Towhey did not immediately accept Ford’s offer to elevate him to chief of staff. Instead,
sources told the Star last year
, he responded with a list of demands that included concerns about the mayor’s professional and personal conduct. Ford then named Provost acting chief of staff while he conducted a search.

Provost made $101,935.46 in 2012. Towhey made $150,295.91.

With files from Paul Moloney

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